The Congress: That Fenced-ln Feeling

“We ought,” mused House Minority Whip Les Arends, “to pass a law to abolish the last couple of weeks of the session.” In the frenetic atmosphere of the waning 89th Congress, such a bill might even stand a good chance of passage.

After an astonishingly productive first session in 1965, this year the 89th rested —all but inert—on its laurels. Presented with 25 major bills in early 1966, it had taken final action on just seven as last week began. The crunch was all the crueler because 35 Senators and all 435 Representatives are up for re-election Nov. 8. Some from nearby states shuttled almost daily between home-state campaigning and Capitol Hill; others with particularly tough races had not turned up in Washington for weeks; some lived too far away to do anything but clench their teeth and stay with the session day after day. Said Hawaii’s Representative Patsy Mink: “That fenced-in feeling makes all of us who want to come back plenty nervous.”

Chicken Feed. In fact, though few would admit it, most Congressmen welcomed the return to Washington for at least a few days a week. Not only could they thus find a respite from the grind of campaigning, but could also explain to constituents—at every opportunity—that urgent affairs of state demanded their presence in the Capital.

As always in a session’s last days, there was a deluge of what Les Arends calls “the chaff and chicken feed.” Last week the Congress had to deal with bills that covered such relatively trivial matters as the burgeoning birth rate of jellyfish, tariffs on imported bagpipes, a $450,000 appropriation to improve sanitation facilities for Wisconsin’s Menominee Indians, a measure to conserve fur seals and protect sea otters.

A Cunning Rider. Besides the irksome presence of such minuscule bills, there was always the danger that sloppy language or slippery shirttail riders would go through unnoticed in the rush. Last week a Senate amendment to deny poverty funds to civil rights rioters was passed — but only after its sponsor, Virginia Democrat Harry Byrd Jr., hurriedly rewrote it on the Senate floor because even he was unable to explain what his original wording meant. Oregon’s Democratic Senator Wayne Morse cunningly pasted a rider on the higher-education aid bill that, if passed, would grant home rule to the District of Columbia. In the midst of a conflagrant and confused debate over amendments to the antipoverty bill, Morse charged that “not 20 of you have read” the Senate committee’s report on the bill’s amendments. Most ob servers thought his figure was high.

At week’s end it seemed unlikely that the President would call a post-election special session, mainly in order to put through the tax increase that he is anxious to postpone until after the election, and it was probable that the 89th would somehow charge hell-bent and headlong through most of its remaining business and adjourn around Oct. 20. To that end, the Congress frantically slammed through several major bills last week. Among them:

> The $1.75 billion antipoverty bill that the Senate finally passed, 49 to 20. The cost was just about equal to the amount that the budget-conscious Administration had asked. Originally, the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee had reported out a $2.5 billion bill, and most of the floor argument blew up around how much that figure could be cut. Still to be resolved are Senate-House differences on how the money is to be allocated.

> The foreign aid appropriations bill, which pushed through the Senate 52 to 22 after a slam-bang 21 hours of debate. The Senate slashed $110,000,000 off a House-approved version of the measure, finally passed a $2.94 billion total — which was well below the Administration’s request ($3.4 billion) and marked the lowest foreign aid appropriation since 1957. The House quickly voted 189 to 89 to accept the Senate figure.

> Aid-to-education bills costing far more than the $4.4 billion the President requested. The Senate version, passed by a 54-to-16 vote, totaled $6.4 billion; the House bill, approved 237 to 97, would cost $5.7 billion. Both in effect will extend 1965’s aid-to-education bill through June 1968, providing grants for nearly all of the nation’s 26,000 school districts, with emphasis on areas that have large enrollments of children from poverty-stricken families.